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“You do not trust yourself at all, but trust in God for everything”

You have never felt so absolutely free as you do now that your freedom is interwoven with love and detachment, with security and insecurity; for you do not trust yourself at all, but trust in God for everything. (Furrow, 787)

August 7

God’s love is a jealous love. He is not satisfied if we come to meet him with conditions. He longs for us to give ourselves completely, without keeping dark corners in our heart, where the joy and happiness of grace and the supernatural gifts cannot reach. Perhaps you are thinking, ‘if I say “yes” to this exclusive Love might I not lose my freedom?’...

Each one of us has at some time or other experienced that serving Christ Our Lord involves suffering and hardship; to deny this would imply that we had not yet found God. A soul in love knows however that when such suffering comes it is only a fleeting impression; the soul soon finds that the yoke is easy and the burden light, because Jesus is carrying it upon his shoulders as he embraced the wood of the Cross when our eternal happiness was at stake [1]. But there are people who do not understand. They rebel against the Creator, in a sad, petty, impotent rebellion, and they blindly repeat the futile complaint recorded in the Psalms, ‘let us break away from their bondage, rid ourselves of their toils’ [2]. They shrink from the hardship of fulfilling their daily task with heroic silence and naturalness, without show or complaint. They have not realized that even when God’s Will seems painful and its demands wounding, it coincides perfectly with our freedom, which is only to be found in God and in his plans.

Such people barricade themselves behind their freedom. ‘My freedom! My freedom!’ they cry. They have their freedom, but they don’t use it. They look at it, they set it up, a clay idol for their petty minds to worship. Is this freedom? What use is this treasure to them, if there is no commitment guiding their whole lives? Such behaviour goes against their very dignity and nobility as human beings. They are left aimless, with no clear path to guide their footsteps on this earth. You and I have met such people. They then let themselves be carried away by childish vanity, by selfish conceit, by sensuality. (Friends of God, 28-29)